Fuckgiver gives world $30,000,000 gift

12 months ago I called on my nearest and dearest to do me a favour, instead of partaking in a traditional 30th birthday celebration, I asked all of my friends to do something that would make the world a better place, by giving a fuck!

The results from this call out were beyond epic - my birthday was celebrated in 30 countries and had an impact on an estimated number of 10,000 people.

A few things held me back from coming good on this promise until now, firstly I didn’t know where to begin to thank all of my homies for being such legends - and secondly my life kind of fell apart not longer after this, with pneumonia (and an over dose of steroids, which sent me a bit crazy with the roid rage!) a parasite living in my belly (who I named Phil) and an epic break up resulting in me being a lost and sad gypsy for a few months, mostly struggling to get out of bed and face the day, let alone think up ways to make the world a better place.

But after litres of tears, being treated like a science experiment in doctors examination rooms, bottles of wines, chocolate (lots of chocolate) and most importantly the most amazing friends and family a human could ever ask for, the light at the end of the dark tunnel began to flicker. And that tiny flicker got brighter and brighter until I realised it was a fucking full blown bon fire!

Before all this went down I started think about how I had spent my career trying to find a way to live within the means of the planet’s capacity with our increasing consumption and growing population. Which in turn leads to our eco-footprint increasing year on year (we are currently consuming 1.6 planers per annum, and in Australia, we are ranked as one of the highest consumers at 4.8-5.4 planets).

But then it hit me - what if instead of just focusing on decreasing consumption - what if I also focused on how we could increase our restorative impact - or our handprint?

Let’s go back to this eco-footprinting business - it’s about how much we have, how much we use and who uses what. Until last year, the how much we have part I have always kind of taken as a number we don’t have too much control over.

But, fuck I was wrong! Check out this:

I started thinking about what I could do in this regenerative space - because, after all, I had a shit tonne of fuckgiving to do.

But, how was I ever going to do anything awesome enough to say thanks?

Well, I knew one thing. It had to be major.

So I borrowed my dad’s best flanno (sorry dad, I will return it soon) and got digging. One tree at a time, I planted a tree for each Fuckgiver to start a Fuckgiving Food Forest.

WTF is that you ask?

Well it’s exactly what it sounds like, a forest that grows food (don’t worry, I had no idea what it was when I heard about it either). One of the awesome things about them, is that instead of being a monoculture crop, that can only grow as one layer, food forests have multiple layers, which basically increases the yield of the forest because of the horizontal and vertical growth. Pretty nifty huh?

And the awesomeness doesn’t stop there! Because of the increased volume of forest, due to this layering effect, the land area is also able to sequester (or store) more carbon for us as too!

Not to mention the majority of the trees are perennials (which is a fancy word that means they keep growing and producing year on year), meaning they develop more complex roots and sequester even more carbon below the ground and in the soil. Another rad feature of a food forest is that the top soil also increases in quality over time compared to traditional monoculture agriculture practices (soil is pretty important, you know, just the stuff we need to grow a large percentage of our food supply - so, yeah, kind of a big deal)

Give a fuck about climate change, food security and soil? Check this out!

There is many epic examples of people doing this around the globe if you want to check them out here and here.

And this part is my favourite (well after the flanno) - did you know the estimated value of a tree is $193, 250 when you take into account things likes oxygen it produces, pollution control, soil fertility, habitat etc. And this number doesn’t even include the value of the food the tree produces let alone its pure aesthetic value!

So basically I gave the first 150 Fuckgivers and the world a $30,000,000 gift, and this is just the beginning - Imagine the impact we could all have if we had Fuckgiving birthdays instead of taking the earth’s resources for a new outfit, and dust collecting ornaments?

If you’re keen to be a Fuckgiver and not a piss-taker you’re in luck! Because we made a DIY bIrthday guide so you can also have a Fuckgiving Birthday :)

June 18th is Fuckgiving's first Birthday - Watch this space to see how collectively we can unlock our potential and do epic stuff for the world!